XXII
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Clarke, Harry, and Taylor, Bayard
WALPURGIS-NIGHT’S DREAM
OBERON AND TITANIA’s GOLDEN WEDDING
INTERMEZZO
MANAGER
Sons of Mieding, rest to-day! Needless your machinery: Misty vale and mountain gray, That is all the scenery.
HERALD
That the wedding golden be. Must fifty years be rounded: But the Golden give to me, When the strife’s compounded.
OBERON
Spirits, if you’re here, be seen— Show yourselves, delighted! Fairy king and fairy queen, They are newly plighted.
PUCK
Cometh Puck, and, light of limb, Whisks and whirls in measure: Come a hundred after him, To share with him the pleasure.
ARIEL
Ariel’s song is heavenly-pure, His tones are sweet and rare ones: Though ugly faces he allure, Yet he allures the fair ones.
OBERON
Spouses, who would fain agree, Learn how we were mated! If your pairs would loving be, First be separated!
TITANIA
If her whims the wife control, And the man berate her, Take him to the Northern Pole, And her to the Equator!
ORCHESTRA. TUTTI.
Fortissimo.
Snout of fly, mosquito-bill, And kin of all conditions, Frog in grass, and cricket-trill,— These are the musicians!
SOLO
See the bagpipe on our track! ’Tis the soap-blown bubble: Hear the schnecke-schnicke-schnack Through his nostrils double!
SPIRIT, JUST GROWING INTO FORM
Spider’s foot and paunch of toad, And little wings—we know ’em! A little creature ’twill not be, But yet, a little poem.
A LITTLE COUPLE
Little step and lofty leap Through honey-dew and fragrance: You’ll never mount the airy steep With all your tripping vagrance.
INQUISITIVE TRAVELLER
Is’t but masquerading play? See I with precision? Oberon, the beauteous fay, Meets, to-night, my vision!
ORTHODOX
Not a claw, no tail I see! And yet, beyond a cavil, Like “the Gods of Greece,” must he Also be a devil.
NORTHERN ARTIST
I only seize, with sketchy air, Some outlines of the tourney; Yet I betimes myself prepare For my Italian journey.
PURIST
My bad luck brings me here, alas! How roars the orgy louder! And of the witches in the mass, But only two wear powder.
YOUNG WITCH
Powder becomes, like petticoat, A gray and wrinkled noddy; So I sit naked on my goat, And show a strapping body.
MATRON
We’ve too much tact and policy To rate with gibes a scolder; Yet, young and tender though you be, I hope to see you moulder.
LEADER OF THE BAND
Fly-snout and mosquito-bill, Don’t swarm so round the Naked! Frog in grass and cricket-trill, Observe the time, and make it!